Reforms of The Antebellum

Period

The Second Great Awakening - The 2nd great awakening refers to a time period in

the 1830's-50's where many people felt that

America had lost its way and had rejected God.

- In response there were many religious revivals

that had 2 purposes

- These purposes were opposed to each other and

they were

1. To oppose Women's suffrage and keep the idea

of the traditional family and religion being the center

of people's lives

2. To promote reforms that will help society become

more equal and more like heaven on earth

Second Great Awakening

Revival Meeting

Republican Motherhood

• The idea that an American woman was a

mother to all Americans

• It was her job to raise a good, moral,

democracy loving child

• Women were seen as vital to the Republic

“Separate Spheres” Concept

“Cult of Domesticity” A woman’s “sphere” was in the home (it was a refuge from the cruel world outside). Her role was to “civilize” her husband and family.

Women’s Rights • Women of the time period had few rights, they

could not vote, or hold political office

• There were many women and some men who tried to get female suffrage or the right to vote

• Elizabeth Cady Stanton was a Suffragist

• She and Lucretia Mott held the Seneca Falls Convention in order to discuss women getting the right to vote

• The Convention wrote the Declaration of Sentiments, which called for equal rights between men and women

Mental + Prison Reform

■ In the 1840’s poor insane people lived in terrible conditions often being chained in pens to be supervised and whipped if they misbehaved

■ Dorthea Dix moved forward the idea of Mental Asylums

■ She also put forth the idea of Rehabilitation which would change or “reform” prisoners so they can re-enter society

Education Reform

■ In the 1840’s in order to get a higher education than 8th grade you needed money.

■ Horace Mann pushed forward the idea of free education through twelfth grade

■ He will eventually succeed in universal education

Temperance

■ There will be some who wish to restrict the sales and drinking of alcohol

■ This idea is known as Temperance

■ Temperance Societies will be made mostly of women who believe alcohol ruins society

Abolitionists

►They believed in slaves being set free

►Many abolitionists were also women’s rights activists such as Elizabeth Cady Stanton

►The abolitionist movement was the largest movement of its time, and also the most divisive

►People of the south saw it as a threat to their way of live, while the abolitionists saw slavery as a sin.

Frederick Douglass

• Frederick Douglass was a free black and a leader of the abolitionist movement

• Very good speaker, leader, and eventual friend of Abraham Lincoln

Harriet Tubman

(1820-1913)

Helped over 300 slaves to freedom. $40,000 bounty on her head. A main “conductor” of the “underground railroad”.

“Moses”

Leading Escaping Slaves

Along the Underground

Railroad

Transcendentalism

- “Transcend” the limits of intellect and allow the emotions, the SOUL, to create an original relationship with the Universe.

- There are moral truths that must be understood, do not trust what you are told

Transcendentalist

Thinking ▪ Man must acknowledge a body of moral truths that

were intuitive and must TRANSCEND what

organizations tell you:

1. The infinite benevolence of God.

2. The infinite benevolence of nature.

3. The divinity of man.

4. They instinctively rejected all secular authority

and the authority of organized churches and the

Scriptures, of law, or of conventions

Transcendentalist

Intellectuals/Writers Concord, MA

Ralph Waldo

Emerson

Henry David

Thoreau

Nature (1832)

Walden (1854)

Resistance to Civil Disobedience

(1849)

R3-1/3/4/5

Utopian Communities

■ Some in the 1840’s attempted Utopian Communities

■ Attempting communal living Brook Farm, Oneida, and New Harmony were created

■ All will fail, often because of the idea of plural marriage

Social Life in the South

• During this Antebellum period America North and South began to polarize

• In the South there was the Plantation System

• An aristocracy of wealthy southern planters ruled, under them were poor white planters, under them the slaves

• The south grew increasingly Agrarian and distant from the north

• Because of this Agricultural base the south grew slower in population than the north and had fewer railroads and telegraphs

Life in the North

⮚ In the North there was an Industrial Revolution..

⮚ Factories brought in unskilled labor

⮚ Many immigrants flocked to the north to fill these jobs

⮚ Germans and Irish were discriminated against as they began to move in and take jobs, many believed that only those born in the U.S. deserved these freedoms, this belief was called Nativism

⮚ Nativism led to the creation of the “Know Nothing” party

⮚ The Know Nothings tried to oppose Irish Catholic immigration